Rose brigade cares for local memorial garden

By Dick Streeper

JOINING THE CORPS

If you are interested in learning how to grow roses and are able to serve four or more mornings a month, including the third Tuesday of the month during the rose blooming season, March through October, come to the organization meeting in the rose garden on Tuesday, at 9:10 a.m.

The rose garden is located on Park Boulevard immediately north of the Naval Hospital.

Dick Streeper leads the educational program for the Rose Garden Corps.

There is a large number of people in San Diego with unrequited love of roses. In Balboa Park there is a fine garden in need of love and attention. Could this be a match made in heaven?

The coastal zone of San Diego County is the best natural location in the world for growing roses. For much of the year, nature provides a greenhouse with temperature and humidity that is ideal for growing roses. The local soils need modification and attention that is easy and inexpensive to maintain. Adequate irrigation is necessary, but modern irrigation control systems solve that problem when placed in the hands of a person who understands the water needs of roses.

This is where we tie the knot. Balboa Park has a rose garden that is recognized as one of the finest in the world. The Park Department of the city of San Diego has collaborated with me for several decades since the founding of the rose garden to allow volunteer rose lovers to do many of the tasks necessary to maintain high standards of rose culture.

In recent years we have raised that standard through the operations of the Rose Garden Corps. For garden staffing purposes, a good rule of thumb is that each rose requires about one man-hour per year, excluding time required for watering. The formula requires that the gardener be an experienced rosarian. Watering is excluded because it varies greatly depending upon rainfall and upon the manner in which the roses are watered.

We have 1,800 roses in our rose garden and thus one full-time person working 2,000 hours a year should be able to maintain the garden. The problem we face is that it takes more than a year to train a person to become a skilled rosarian. We have solved that problem in recent years by bringing volunteers into service.

Most of the members of the Rose Garden Corps are not employed outside of the home, and only a small percentage are members of any garden club. I was especially looking for persons who had retired and downsized into a smaller home or quarters where their love of gardening was not being satisfied.

Lots of teaching and learning goes on in the hours spent in the garden by our Corps members. On the third Tuesday of each month in the growing season, I lead a short class centered on tasks to be addressed in the garden in the following weeks. I encourage that all members rank themselves in confidence and time served in the garden. I encourage new volunteers to pair with those who have worked in the garden for three or more years. In that way there is a lot of teaching and learning going on as well as socializing

Among other things, members learn the unique qualities of the various varieties of roses in the garden and how to disbud and prune each of them for best performance. The members also score the roses in the garden, which is a part of learning to identify them.